Small Tourney Strategies

[CaliQ]

I have been playing a number of small 40-50 dollar buy in tournements lately and I have been playing my usual tight aggressive game. I have been noticing that I make the final table quite often but most of the time I don't have enough chips to really do anything. These are designed to be done in an hour or 2 with the blinds going up every 12-15 min. Does anyone play these type of quick tournements and if so do you loosen up and push a lot of hands early to get some chips? or just play normal and hope to catch some hands. I know later in the tournement to start trying to get the blinds from overtight players who are trying to get to the final table, I am more trying to get a feel for early on when the blinds are small and you are not going to get someone out by raising. Hope this ramble makes a little sense.

[M.B.E.]

When the blinds go up so quickly the luck quotient is even greater than for other tournaments. So it might well just be "bad luck" that you haven't had enough chips by the final table to win.

In a tournament like this, you basically have no chance of winning unless two or three times you get a good hand which stands up and takes a decent-sized pot.

[cferejohn]

The bigger the blinds and the faster they go up, the more aggressive you need to be and the more marginal hands you are going to have to play. You probably want to be more aggressive than you would in a slower format because you are going to have to get opponents to lay down somewhat better hands than you if you want to do well when you aren't getting great cards.